Accident investigations revealed that almost two thirds of the 1.2 million people killed in road traffic crashes worldwide are pedestrians. Pedestrian safety is now a high profile issue within the automotive industry to compliance the safety stringent legislations (Regulation 78/2009 and Euro NCAP). The motive of our work is to design the bonnet which meets EORO NCAP pedestrian legislation requirements.
OEMs throughout the world use expensive materials like Aluminum and expensive techniques like Pop up Hood and air bags to bring down HPC value and offer pedestrian safety. Most of the Vehicles rated above 3 stars use Aluminum or Pop up kind of technology to bring down the HPC Value. However, the present invention uses conventional steel panel with a Ladder honeycomb structure concept to meet pedestrian safety related regulations. Few OEMs are using honeycomb structure but are not using ladder structure which helps in energy absorption and controlled deformation at the center.
Most of the vehicle bonnets include a generally planar or curvilinear outer skin which is joined to a series of reinforcing ribs provided by a stamped metallic sheet of material. During vehicle and pedestrian collision, it is observed that the pedestrian is seriously injured due to the pedestrian's head striking the bonnet of the vehicle. To keep the risk of injury as low as possible, controlled resilience in the head impact region of the bonnet is required. The present invention addresses this problem and provides the novel inner hood structure that will protect the pedestrian in case of pedestrian impact by absorbing the impact energy.